Employment growth in the UK: the sectoral view

Considering the state of the economy, employment growth in the UK is, with 1,7%, quite high. Which sectors added most jobs? Remarkably, about half of total job growth is located in education and health. In the UK, education is a female dominated sector (71%). More than half of the net new entrants were male, however. Does anybody know why education added so much jobs in the UK?

I do however agree with the caveats mentioned by Scott, when he tries to analyse these data. And not just the jobs data indicate higher growth than at present estimated by the ONS, the increasing deficit on the current account points in the same direction. Remember, however, that employment is a lagging variable and the decline of the British economy in the fourth quarter still has to show up in the employment data – I expect Britsh employment growth to go down and unemployment to go up in the January-March period. An interesting development in Germany: moderate job growth in Germany (for a large part concentrated in ‘health!’) in 2012 was to a very considerable extent caused by people working fewer hours per person.

Share this:

There are plenty of easily accessed data sets, in my view. Sophistication in navigating them is no longer so important. After all, this is the POST autistic network, isn’t it. Giving context to the data with good, solid theory, is more important than multiplying the numbers

Does it make any difference to the above figure if you take into account the reclassification of jobs in and out of the public and private sector? For example, Further Education Corporations and Sixth Form College Corporations in England were recorded as public sector up to the first quarter of 2012, but have since been classified as private sector.

According to the ONS the respondents to this inquiry are asked if they are working in the private or the public sector as well as in which ‘activity sector’ they are working. Private or public education should not matter (but the devil is always in the statistical details with such reclassifications).

Email subscription to this blog

RWER 26,498 subscribers

Real World Economics Review

The RWER is a free open-access journal, but with access to the current issue restricted to its 26,498 subscribers (07/12/16). Subscriptions are free. Over one million full-text copies of RWER papers are downloaded per year.

—- Forthcoming WEA Paperbacks —-

———— Armando Ochangco ———-

Shimshon Bichler / Jonathan Nitzan

————— Mauro Gallegati ————–

————— Herman Daly —————-

————— Asad Zaman —————

—————– C. T. Kurien —————

————— Robert Locke —————-

Guidelines for Comments

• This blog is renowned for its high level of comment discussion. These guidelines exist to further that reputation.
• Engage with the arguments of the post and of your fellow discussants.
• Try not to flood discussion threads with only your comments.
• Do not post slight variations of the same comment under multiple posts.
• Show your fellow discussants the same courtesy you would if you were sitting around a table with them.